New Faculty to Join W&L Law in Fall 2026 The new faculty members teach and research in the areas of education and religion as well as tax law and comparative constitutional law.

By Law Communications
April 28, 2026

Washington and Lee School of Law is pleased to welcome two new members of the permanent faculty. The appointments of Vania Blaiklock and Fernando J. Loayza-Jordán are effective July 1.

Professor Vania Blaiklock joins W&L in 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Law. She teaches in the areas of constitutional law, education law, and law and religion. Her research and published works consider the role that race, religion, and education have played and continue to play in American constitutional law, with an emphasis on how the intersection of these concepts impact Black American political and societal advancement in the United States. She has written on the relationship between school choice alternatives, educational inequality, the history of segregation, and religious charter schools. Her articles have appeared in Harvard Law & Policy Review, Northwestern Law Review, and William & Mary Law Review.

Professor Blaiklock earned her B.A. in political science from Lee University and her J.D. from William & Mary Law School. During law school she was a member of the Bill of Rights Journal, the Moot Court team, and served as a leader in the Black Law Students Association. Following Law School, Professor Blaiklock spent two years as an employment attorney at Woods Rodgers (formerly Vandeventer Black) in Norfolk and Richmond, Virginia. Pivoting to a focus on constitutional research, Professor Blaiklock left the practice of law and returned to William & Mary, where she earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies.

Professor Fernando J. Loayza-Jordán joins W&L Law in 2026 as an Assistant Professor of Law. He has taught a wide range of courses, including federal income taxation, corporate taxation, international taxation, tax planning, critical legal studies, law and economics, and legal theory.

Professor Loayza-Jordán’s primary scholarship focuses on the interaction between taxation, justice, and democracy. He draws theoretical tools from fiscal sociology, law and political economy, and political philosophy. Currently, his primary research focus is the new international tax order, exploring new theoretical approaches to understand international tax justice and how to conceive a theory of international tax peace. He also works on comparative constitutional law, focusing on the erosion of democracy in Latin America and the separation of powers. He has presented his research in Australia, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. His work has been published or is forthcoming in leading US law journals and peer-reviewed journals. He has also written opinion pieces for newspapers in Peru, India, and the U.S., including in the New York Times.

Before joining the law school, Professor Loayza-Jordán taught at Drexel School of Law and Yale University, where he also taught in the Yale Young Global Scholars Program, served as a Tutor in Law, and was awarded the Teaching Innovation Project Grant for his work connecting classrooms and social movements. He has also taught tax law and legal theory in Peru and India, where he received several teaching awards. At Drexel, he served as the faculty advisor of the International Law Association and the Latin American Law Student Association. He is involved in several mentoring activities, including the Olivas Faculty Recruitment Initiative, which supports law students from underrepresented backgrounds interested in entering the legal academy.

He is a Doctoral (JSD) Candidate at Yale Law School (degree expected in 2026), where he also earned his LL.M. While at Yale, he was affiliated with the Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies (CLAIS) at the MacMillan Center and served as Senior Advisor of the Yale Society of International Law and as a Board Member of the Latinx Law Student Association and the Law and Political Economy Group. He earned his LL.B. from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru, where he graduated summa cum laude. He has also studied Public Policy at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain) and International Taxation at Leiden University (Netherlands).

Before entering legal academia, he worked for several years in tax consulting at PwC, where he became a Senior Manager of Tax and Legal Services, handling international and transactional tax matters for clients in over 40 jurisdictions. After leaving PwC, he worked as an independent consultant on tax and policy issues and as a researcher for the Tax Justice Network.

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